Tag Archives: vasectomy reversal

In my last blog, I wrote in some detail about our trip to Oklahoma and the vasectomy reversal surgery I had while there. In the opening stages of the surgery, Dr. Wilson looked at a fluid sample and informed me that my sperm had heads, but no tails. Not a huge deal; such things are to be expected 3 years after having had a vasectomy. After the surgery I could again start producing healthy, mobile sperm that were able to get where they needed to go, but it would take approximately 3 months for everything to be at full capacity. The chances of getting pregnant before then would be fairly slim…after all, without tails, the sperm can’t really go anywhere. Armed with this information, Shauna and I returned home and figured we’d be able to start actively trying to get pregnant around September or so.

That was on May 16th. Flash forward to June 3rd. I had gone to work that morning at 8 AM, and left Shauna in bed sleeping. On days such as this, I return home around 9:30 to pick Shauna up and we both go back to work to finish getting the store open. On this particular day I was going about my business at work when Shauna texted me and asked if I would have a few minutes to talk when I went to pick her up. I said I would, then went and finished whatever task I was working on and headed home. When I pulled up, Shauna was sitting outside on the steps waiting for me; my assumption was that she wanted to vent about one of the kids or something. She, in fact, did want to talk about one of the kids…the one that’s growing inside of her.

You see, she had taken a pregnancy test that morning and it was very, very clearly positive. I was not surprised at all that she was pregnant; I always assumed that, even with the decreased odds because of our surgeries, we’d have good luck. I was quite blown away, however, at how fast it happened. Conception occured 5 days after my surgery. It’s almost as if the universe took a good long look at me and said “you know, there just needs to more of THAT around, and I don’t think anyone should have to wait for it, either. I’m gonna give the people what they don’t even know they want, and I’m gonna give it to them now!” And with that, I was able to impregnate Shauna months before any medical common sense would have dictated that I’d be able to. She was pregnant a week and a half before I was even medically cleared to begin attempting intercourse, for crying out loud. The surreal, mind-exploding QUICKNESS of it all was pretty much the only thing I could think about, not only that day but for several days afterward. It honestly seemed a little too good (and fast) to be true, so we decided that we would wait to tell anyone until Shauna had an ultrasound confirming that it was a healthy, viable pregnancy. We sat on this bombshell for 2 weeks until finally, today, we went to Shauna’s ultrasound appointment and got the news we were waiting for: the baby is right where it needs to be and is right on target as far as growth. We were even able to see the heartbeat today.

With this confirmation, and with now having told the kids, we are now able to officially announce to the world that we are indeed pregnant. We’re both extremely excited, but it still seems strangely unreal. Shauna and I have both the spent the last several years thinking that our days of having babies were over, and even though we’ve went to considerable effort over the last several months to make this happen, it hasn’t quite sunk in yet. Again, we knew we’d eventually be pregnant…but not after 5 days! I’m sure it’ll become more real as we go to more appointments, begin to acquire more baby stuff and get prepared for The Arrival. One thing is for sure: this baby is already as loved and wanted right now, today, as it will be on the day it is born. I’m beyond excited to be a dad to a baby again. I’m good at it.

I may have tested negative on Wednesday, May 30th when I needed to start those heavy meds for my infection….. but on Sunday, June 3rd, when my period was due, I tested positive! WE’RE PREGNANT!!

The morning that I tested, I didn’t really have any reason to do so. I just woke up, thought it was weird that my boobs were more sore than normal, noticed I wasn’t bleeding yet, and figured why not, since we had purchased a 3-pack of tests. So I went into the bathroom and tested. The positive line came up as quickly as the test line and immediately I was a little freaked out. Not because I was pregnant – that was EXCITING!!! But because I had started those antibiotics that I was not supposed to take during pregnancy. Jarrod had already gone to work that morning, so I texted him and told him to come to get me a little early so we could chat first. He showed up about half an hour later (but it seemed like I waited for HOURS). I told him some other random stuff that had been going on around the house, and then handed him the pregnancy test from my pocket. He was so happy, but also a little hesitant to be happy because of my infection issues and medications. He couldn’t stop looking at the test in awe as we continued to discuss everything on our minds.

It was entirely unexpected, unpredicted, and highly unlikely to happen so soon. I mean really, I ovulated only FIVE days after Jarrod’s vasectomy reversal. And to quote Jarrod, “The recommended healing time before attempting “relations” was two weeks, and I don’t mind telling you that we have stuck unyieldingly to that medical advice, being the responsible adults that we are and whatnot.” So I don’t know how that could have possibly happened. Hahaha!

Like the doctor said, those sperm must’ve been waiting at the gates like racehorses, just waiting for the reversal to be done. And BAM, pregnant! But we’ve waited to tell anyone because first of all, the test was positive on the actual day of my period being due. Which would have made me only 1 day short of being 4 weeks along. That is very early to know for certain there will be a future for this tiny life. Also, with my tubal reversal, there is a higher chance of ectopic pregnancy, and we wanted to wait until we had all our early testing and viability ultrasound done before we even told our kids and the rest of our family, let alone going public with it all.

Well, today I am officially 6 weeks along, and we got our ultrasound to make sure baby is where he/she is supposed to be, and all is well! And with that information we were able to tell the kids and other family members…. and now share it with the world! We are so excited that this happened, especially so quickly! Baby is due February 11, 2019. There will be plenty of updates along the way! So stay tuned…

I could razzle dazzle you with all manner of linguistic gymnastics to explain why I haven’t written a new blog in literally months, but it would just be an elaborate smokescreen, you see, to obscure the truth, which is that I was simply too lazy to write one. There has no been shortage of things to write about, as you will soon see, and in fact the sheer volume of goings-on around here is proving a little overwhelming; it’s been so long since I’ve written anything, and so much has transpired in the meantime, that I’m not altogether sure how to tackle this thing. I guess we’ll figure it out, or not, together.

I’m going to try to keep this particular post contained more or less to one subject, because otherwise it’s doomed to become an unwieldy, lumbering behemoth. Besides, there are many things, good and not so good, happening around here, all of which are worthy of their own post. Throwing too much into this one would just dilute their individual significance. I know better than to promise anything with regards to how frequently I’m going to write new posts, but I will say that I INTEND to write more often, and give all these things the attention they deserve. For now, I’m sure you will be delighted to know that the subject of this one will be the loose, dangly collection of objects I carry around with me wherever I go: my testicles.

You see, on the way back from Colorado (where we got married, you’ll remember), Shauna and I discussed at length what it would be like to have kids together. It really just amounted to a fun conversation to help pass the time during the long car ride; after all, we had both had the necessary procedures to prevent us from ever being able to have more kids. In order for us to have kids together, it would involve both of us having surgeries to reverse those procedures, which would involve a lot of money, travel, and recovery time…at the end of which we would have diminished odds of actually conceiving, anyway. We ended the conversation by basically saying sure, it would be awesome to have kids together, but we simply met each other too late in life for that to happen. The subject didn’t really come up again until this spring, when we were laying in bed and one or the other of us said something, and the other one said something back, and next thing you know we were on a plane to North Carolina to get Shauna’s tubes untied.

We scheduled my vasectomy reversal at a clinic (brilliantly named “The Reversal Clinic”) in the town of Muskogee, Oklahoma – a town immortalized in the classic song “Okie From Muskogee” by Merle Haggard. Because of my love for this song, I had high hopes that we were headed for a town where even squares can have a ball; where they still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse, and where white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all. Instead, we drove into this shithole town during one of the most vicious rainstorms I’ve seen in all my born days, and the only bad thing about that is that the whole town didn’t get washed out to sea in the process. There were so many things to dislike about the city of Muskogee, OK that for me to dig too deep into it would threaten to overtake this entire post, but suffice it to say that, you know, maybe don’t go there. Unless you want a cheap vasectomy reversal.

Anyway, my surgery was done by one Dr. Wilson, who was kind of a weird guy, and in fact the whole experience was kind of weird. Shauna and I walked into the clinic to find not a single soul to greet us, but instead a note saying someone would be with us soon. Eventually Dr. Wilson showed up, got me checked in, then retreated to the back to put on scrubs and get the procedure underway. This seemingly one-man operation did not immediately feel me with confidence that my nards were about to literally be in the hands of a qualified professional, but I decided to go with the flow because YOLO, I guess. I was awake for the procedure (a local anesthetic was used to numb the area) and Shauna was allowed to be in the room with me. From her vantage point she was able to see a lot of what was going on (I, thankfully, could not). Fortunately she has a healthy curiosity and interest in such things and the sight of my scrotum flayed open like a butterflied pork chop didn’t gross her out. The whole thing took about 90 minutes or so, and then we were on our way. Dr. Wilson, I salute you, wherever you may be.

We stopped at a pharmacy to pick up a couple prescriptions, and then went to the bed and breakfast where we were to spend the night. It was good, not great; by Muskogee standards it was probably the Ritz, but Shauna and I are from Newton, IA where perfection is demanded and bullshit of any kind is NEVER tolerated. The next morning we got on the road and headed home. The recommended healing time before attempting “relations” was two weeks, and I don’t mind telling you that we have stuck unyieldingly to that medical advice, being the responsible adults that we are and whatnot. We’re both realistic about our expectations…and to be sure, they are tempered a bit by other things going on, particularly health issues that Shauna is currently dealing with. Now that I’m more or less healed, I can absolutely say that I am incredibly happy that Shauna and I went through all of this. It was pretty overwhelming at times (the general tone of this post doesn’t really let you know some of the actual anguish we had to go through to make all of this happen, but as they say, we laugh so that we don’t cry). I’m glad it’s all done, I’m beyond excited to be able to have another kid (or kids), and there is no one on Earth who I’d rather go on this journey with. Shauna…you are amazing.

Earlier this week I had my tubal reversal follow-up appointment with the doctor I chose to be my OBGYN here in our hometown, Dr. Johnson. He’s new to the clinic, and has quite a lot of experience in his field.

To back up a little bit, I did have a consultation with him before my tubal reversal. I wanted to get a check up with a doctor and discuss my overall health and age in regards to going through another pregnancy or more. He informed me at that time that a tubal reversal is not a simple surgery that I will have an easy time finding a doctor for (he didn’t know I was looking into Dr. Monteith yet), and that it wasn’t cheap. He recommended I look into in vitro instead. He also said that natural fertility decreases after age 35, and even more after 40… And that there is a risk with pregnancy after c-section (which I’ve had 2), no matter how long it had been. That the scar tissue can cause a problem with placenta attachment, and even embryo attachment. He wasn’t necessarily discouraging me from being pregnant, but he was laying out all the risks for me, which is exactly what I wanted. No nonsense. I told him I was already looking into a specialist to reverse my tubal, and he wished me good luck.

To Jarrod and I went to North Carolina, as I’ve already written about. We had a fantastic experience with Dr. Monteith at A Personal Choice, and he sent my surgical records and after-care instructions to Dr. Johnson.

Then, as I was saying, I had my follow-up with Dr. Johnson this week. He took all of Dr. Monteith’s instructions very seriously, which I’m very pleased with. Said everything was very thorough, and read to me exactly what I am to do when I get a positive pregnancy test. Which is: get in to see him as soon as possible, start getting regular blood draws to check my hormone levels, and when they are high enough have an ultrasound to check for proper implantation of the embryo. From then on, take care of myself and prepare for a baby!

Jarrod’s vasectomy reversal is scheduled for May 16th, so it won’t be long at all now! He will post about his experience when it’s all said and done. We’ve heard different things about how it will go afterwards. Some people say it could take months for his sperm count to climb up to impregnation levels. Some people say he has the chance at getting me pregnant right away. But Jarrod and I both agree – it will happen when it happens. We aren’t concerning ourselves with following a calendar or stressing out over any of it. We both believe we will conceive soon enough. If, after a year or so, nothing has happened yet, we will talk to the doctor about testing. At this point, I think we would deny any fertility treatments if it came to that. But that’s so far into the future right now… we figure we will cross that bridge if and when we come to it.